You won't be surprised, given what I have written before, to know that I have a great deal of sympathy with your position.

My own view is that the only argument which carries weight is the one that Our Lord, whose attitude towards women was far from patriarchal, had no owmn as Apostles. The same was true of the early Church.

The best argument the other way is that there are many women who do feel called to the priesthood, and there is no earthly reason why they should not be able to realise that vocation. But, as both the Orthodox and Catholics read it, there is a non-earthly reason for this.

What there is neither heavenly nor earthly reason for is any attitude which fails to recognise the total equality between the sexes. As any one involved in any Church recognises, women play major roles in any Church, and without their talents our worshipping communities would be much the poorer.

Most men are not going to be priests, and no married man is going to be able to be a bishop, but the fact remains that young, or unmarried men who feel the call have a chance to realise their vocation; that is not true for women. The OC, like the RCC, hold this to be God's will. Until recently, and then only in the Western world, this was accepted uncritically, but with the advent of equality in other things for women, it is natural that there should have arisen a cry for equality here.

The obstacle here is that, for the OC and RCC, it is not about our ideas, or even 'equality', it is about the mandate inherited from Christ.

In Christ,

John

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)